Hogwarts was Hers
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: When she'd raged and pleaded that she had to go back, that this was her fight, and didn't they understand, that Harry was Ron's and Hogwarts was hers.


**Hogwarts was Hers**

**Summary: **When she'd raged and pleaded that she had to go back, that this was her fight, and didn't they understand, that Harry was Ron's and Hogwarts was hers.

**Author:** wanderlustlover  
**Recipient:** shellebelle93  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Rating:** PG/PG-13 for Language  
**Author's Notes:** This was an instant inspiration when I saw the prompt and it was a delight to write.

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Ginny Weasley had always wanted to go to Hogwarts.

She'd grown up with the leaving to and coming from Hogwarts as part of her life, several times a year for her whole childhood. The start of term. The end of term. The Christmas holidays. The Easter holidays.

Watching her brothers board and flee the shiny red Hogwart's Express that filled so many of her young dreams. With all the children and sweets and magical promises of other places and distant freedoms to do magic. She knows, logically, she can't remember it from her earliest years, but it feels like she can. In her skin. That she would have been there in her mother's arms during the drop offs and picks during even Bill's first years. And of what she can remember, it dominated all time.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Her parents' stories of having gone there, which mingled into the stories from her eldest brothers of their classes, friends, and Quidditch. The awe filled trips for school supplies each year, that hinted at this other world, so close to hers, that she wasn't allowed to be a part of just yet.

Bill and Charlie graduated and went off to become Important before she even got there. Each year someone new went - Percy, and then the twins, leaving, she remembered those in vivid clearness. Each time she wanted to go, each time she'd twisted one of her parents' hands and counted the years again. She knew it was always coming, but the waiting for it was terrible.

But the most terrible of the knowing and wanting and waiting only happened twice.

The first time was the year Ron left. They'd been the youngest together, and the two born closest together, and even if she was only his tag-along little sister, having to push herself harder and be sterner to prove herself among so many brothers –- she was never alone. She always had Ron, at least.

And then, then, suddenly, with one twinkle of that vast red locomotive she was alone.

For the first time ever. For a whole year. Waiting for it to be her turn. Being the only Weasley who'd never gotten to attend, never understood all their inside jokes about statues and Hogsmeade and Snape. And she'd wanted to hate Ron a little that year. Learning spells and meeting all those people. And, of course, there was Harry.

Her brother: Harry Potter's best friend. Could there be any more of a sign that she was always born just a little too late to keep up with any of them?

Her mother had wanted so much that year. It was going to be special. Of course her mother missed all the boys underfoot, and she loved her entire family with a fierceness that she engendered in all her children, but she'd always wanted a daughter. And here it was, a year for them to do all sorts of things together. Just the two of them.

Ginny had vacillated back and forth between compliance and rebellion, both with a vengeance, the whole year. Especially during the weeks leading up to and away from her brothers' holidays, when it came home even more sharply how slowly such a small time period like a year could move.

How could ten years have gone so fast and that one take an eternity?

And then it came, bringing it with it everything and nothing she could expect.

The second time was right now.

Now, while Ginny sat in the window box of her aunt's strange smelling house, turning the D.A. Coin over and over between her fingers. It hurt to hold the shiny disc, and see the newest message of the last week, date or location, not yet changed. But it made her even more anxious to not be touching it at all.

Now, when every thought of Hogwarts twisted her stomach like someone had shoved the sword of Gryffindor straight through her middle. A jack-knife sensation like the Caros' curses for being caught, for talking back, for daring not to drop her chin and be cowed.

Now, when Neville and the D.A. needed her. When she'd raged and pleaded that she had to go back, that this was her fight, and didn't they understand, that Harry was Ron's and Hogwarts was hers . She couldn't abandon them now, even if the Ministry would come for her. Let them come! She'd screamed those, hating the tears that betrayed her helplessness through her anger.

First Luna hadn't come back from The Christmas Holidays. And now she couldn't go back at Easter ones. And the days wouldn't stop passing, seeming to shrink the rooms with each week they collected.

"Hey, Ginny," Fred said, sauntering in with George.

"Piss off," she retorted, moodily. Then cringed when she heard her full name shouted from another room in admonition. She narrowed her eyes on the twins. Forcing out a word, that wasn't very near a question. "Fine. What."

"Maybe we shouldn't ask her," Fred said.

"Nope," George replied. "Have to make her regret calling us gits."

"I didn't call you gits," Ginny said, edgewise, giving them not much in the way of curiosity and the inclination of an unsaid 'today.' Except for the pause after it. Because. Well. Fred and George could at least be depended on for rule breaking and brief ends to the monotony of endless waiting.

And she couldn't really hate them. Her family, but the Twins especially. Their broadcasts with Lee were the only reason Hogwarts got words that she hadn't simply gone missing like Luna. Because she could at least get word out. And then Neville had gotten word back, though it was touch and go.

"And now you won't," went Fred triumphantly, with a blandishment of his hands upward. "We've talked Mum and Dad into letting us setup the yard for a Quidditch match"

Ginny was still for the length of too long a pause looking at them, as her brothers broke into smiling. George elbowed his twin, but cocked his gaze still toward her, "Told you that would get her attention."

"Is she in then?" came Lee's voice from just outside the room.

Ginny frowned, but shrugged, shoving her hands and the fake galleon back in her pockets, "Yes, she's in."

Because at least flying was better than sitting here, at the window.

Reminding herself with every few seconds that she was stuck. Stuck where they expected her to be able to master her temper and sit still, pretending that never leaving one set of rooms was enough for her. For who she'd become. For who they'd all raised her to be.

For who her family and Hogwarts and Voldemort and Harry Potter had made her.

The girl who wanted nothing more than to look down at her coin and see the message to Come Now. The message that would call them all to The Last Great Stand. To Dumbledore's Army. To Harry.

Harry who had kissed her, more than half a year ago now, as though he couldn't breathe without her and then still left. Helplessly, wonderfully, idiotically, selflessly noble. He wouldn't have let himself be trapped in his aunt's house, she bet. And she didn't care how furtively everyone looked at each other, there was no possibility Harry was dead. She'd know. She'd just - _know._

And so long as he was out there – so long as her brothers managed to fill the night airwaves with hope, so long as her parents and their friends held out against even the overturned Ministry –- she could manage this, too. Waiting for the message that would bring her back into the fray, back to Hogwarts, where she belonged.


End file.
